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Online OCD treatments more effective than medication

Professor Kyrios will present his Public Lecture at JCSMR tonight - Monday 30 May at 5.30pm - All Welcome.

Trials of a new online treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have shown it to be three-to-four times more effective than medication.

A group based treatment for hoarding disorder has also proved to be effective and is now being converted into an online treatment.

Professor Mike Kyrios, Director of The Australian National University (ANU) Research School of Psychology and world-leading expert in OCD and hoarding disorder is set to give a 'sneak preview' of the study findings in a public lecture on Monday.

"Hoarding and OCD are treatable, even though people think they are untreatable. We have been developing online treatments that are very, very effective," Professor Kyrios said.

"We found that the online treatments are very effective."

Professor Kyrios said the management of hoarding disorder in Australia had improved significantly since the condition was added to the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in May 2013.

"The nice thing about including hoarding in the manual is that mental health has now come to the party in terms of being able to treat hoarding. Up until then mental health services would not help," he said.

"In the past hoarding was considered a subtype of OCD, but those of us who work in this area know that people with hoarding problems are completely different.

"The talk will provide an overview of current understandings of the two disorders and how we ought to be managing them."

Professor Kyrios will be speaking at the ANU John Curtin School of Medical Research 'Health through Discovery' Public Lecture Series.

The online OCD trail has been part of a study funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council.